Zotac are one of many higher graphics card makers of the post-EVGA period, so even because the early pangs of handheld gaming PC fatigue begin to creep in, I’ve been retaining a hopeful eye on the Zotac Zone. That is their tackle a Steam Deck rival, or extra particularly, the Steam Deck OLED, as that is the primary actual competitor to go for a equally star-bright, colour-erupting AMOLED show. Cor, phwoar, and certainly, wowzers.
Very like a Zotac GPU, the Zone is chunkier than you would possibly like however in the end well-crafted. It efficiently combines that wealthy display screen with oodles of enter options and Deck-thrashing efficiency, although between its excessive worth and a downright vampiric thirst for battery juice, it’s positively extra of a specialist device than a crowd-pleasing moveable.
That is, at the very least, by design. Take the controls: the pleasantly concave, Corridor impact thumbsticks, mechanically clicky D-pad, and adjustable triggers may all have been lifted from a elaborate top-end ‘professional’ gamepad just like the Xbox Elite Wi-fi Controller or Razer Wolverine V3 Professional. These alone give the Zone a calibre of enter high quality and adaptability that’s at the moment distinctive amongst handheld PCs, after which it goes even additional by including twin trackpads. Certainly, identical to on the Steam Deck, besides these have actual proper/left-click mechanisms, as an alternative of faking them with haptics as Valve do. Extra importantly, rubbing them in tandem makes it far simpler to navigate Home windows 11 on the Zone than on the thumbstick-only Asus ROG Ally and ROG Ally X, and even the single-padded Lenovo Legion Go.
One other intelligent little element is the radial dials round every stick, which may be set to rapidly modify display screen brightness, speaker quantity, or the brightness of the RGB strip on the rear. All of those may be adjusted by different means, together with with the precise quantity buttons on the highest, although having the ability to make these modifications with out shifting both hand from their regular gripping positions is genuinely fairly useful. My solely grievance it that I want these dials may management extra, like thumbstick and trackpad sensitivity.
Granted, not the entire Zone’s options are as reliably helpful. I’m unsure why there’s a webcam right here, nestled up by the face buttons, except you fancied working some sort of low-quality livestream with an unflatteringly angled facecam. And the hidden value of stuffing in all these further bells, whistles, and full-on tubas is that the Zone is noticeably heavier than the 640g Steam Deck OLED – my scales put it at a dense 714g, much more than the 692g determine given within the official specs. It’s thicker than the Deck as properly, although not fairly as vast.
Nonetheless, this substantial really feel extends to the construct high quality, and I suppose some further millimetres to the depth will permit the principle chip – a laptop-style AMD Ryzen 7 8840U – extra room to breathe. Whereas not as whispery because the Deck OLED, the Zone’s mid-game fan noise is definitely drowned out by the audio system, and the hand grips by no means develop into very warm to the contact.
Constructing a handheld round a laptop computer processor like this, versus a purpose-built cellular APU, is usually a difficult enterprise. MSI tried it with the Claw, and regardless of a wonderful product identify (the Clawwwww), its Intel CPU proved so mismatched for the duty that they stopped sending round assessment kits and rapidly introduced a reworked successor. The place video games efficiency is anxious, nonetheless, the Zone seems to have gotten it proper, its built-in Radeon 780M graphics pulling the perfect benchmark leads to its class.
Even evaluating the Zone’s 1080p outcomes to these of the 800p Steam Deck, it both outpaces or virtually matches the latter, and at a lowered 720p, Zotac merely has the quickest handheld of the entire bunch. Even the ROG Ally X, with its jacked-up 24GB reminiscence provide, can’t sustain.
This further energy additionally allows video games that may solely simply maintain above 30fps on the Steam Deck to both run smoother on the Zone, or to stay playable with increased high quality settings. Metaphor: ReFantazio, to call one, wants nearly each setting on its lowest for the Deck to deal with 30fps at 800fps; on the Zone, it sometimes stays above 35fps on Intermediate high quality, regardless of the added pressure of 1080p. This decision is a bit an excessive amount of for the calls for of Horizon Forbidden West, however at 720p, it could possibly nonetheless maintain above 30fps with a mixture of Low high quality and FSR 3.1 on Efficiency mode – or 45-60fps with body era enabled on prime. The Steam Deck OLED wants FSR on its significantly uglier Extremely Efficiency setting to actually have a hope of 30fps.
Sadly, the Zone isn’t a lot of a efficiency improve that it’ll run completely something. PC-brutalisers like Warhammer 40,000: Area Marine 2 and the Silent Hill 2 remake gained’t reliably meet the 30fps minimal at 720p, no matter how a lot fuzzy upscaling you throw at them. Maybe video games like these are the following frontier for handhelds; the mountains that Valve are ready for a “generational leap” to clear. Within the meantime, although, there’s worth in merely having the ability to run mild and middleweight video games are tangibly faster speeds, particularly when the Zone’s 120Hz refresh charges makes it simpler to understand the improved slickness.
Talking of screens, the Zone’s show isn’t simply sharper and sooner than the Deck OLED’s, however bolder too. If solely marginally: I recorded it masking 100% of the sRGB gamut, principally which means it could possibly present extra colors than with the 93.8% protection of Valve’s handheld. Balancing this out is the Deck OLED’s barely increased peak brightness, of 984cd/m2 to the Zone’s 916cd/m2, whereas each get the Infinity:1 distinction ratio inherent to OLED shows.
The Zone nonetheless claims an total specs win, by advantage of its increased decision and refresh charge, but it surely’s a close-run contest on basic usability. Firstly, the Steam Deck OLED’s display screen has a way more efficient anti-glare coating, making it extra snug to see at in direct mild. Second, the Deck handles HDR an terrible lot higher, auto-enabling it when launching a suitable sport however leaving it off in any other case. Because the Zone is a Home windows machine, taking part in HDR video games first requires that you just manually dig into the show settings to modify on Home windows HD Color. Which – as a result of Microsoft have by no means found out in any other case – butchers the looks of all non-HDR content material till you disable it once more. Even sillier than that, although, is how the Zone solely permits for HDR within the first occasion when it’s plugged in and charging – so this function is off the desk totally on battery energy. Which, for an expressly moveable system, is sort of defeating the purpose.
The Deck OLED does software program higher normally, actually. That’s to not low cost how Home windows will natively work with all sport launchers and anti-cheat methods, a minority of which the Deck household nonetheless has hassle with, however the total SteamOS expertise stays extra nice and painless than utilizing Home windows on a handheld. Sure, even with the additional trackpads. These do assist with clicking and scrolling, however you’re nonetheless in the end attempting to wrestle an OS constructed for desktop displays right into a dinky 7in system, and that’s by no means going to be really feel as intuitive and even responsive because the completely bespoke, gamepad-tuned SteamOS.
The Zone will get just a little assist from Zotac’s ONE utility, which – equally to Armory Crate on the ROG Ally – pulls in each a mixed launcher for video games and sport platforms, and a Zone-specific set of instruments, settings, and overlays. A few of it’s helpful, such because the easy-to-use enter rebind menu, but it surely additionally provides nothing that SteamOS (or certainly, Armory Crate) does. Fairly a bit much less, actually. Hit the overlay button whereas taking part in a sport, and the sparseness of switches and toggles will make the SteamOS equal seem like the Massive Hadron Collider’s management room.
What’s worse are the bugs. The Zone isn’t as a lot of a misbehaving software program safari because the ROG Ally X was at launch, however I did undergo a recurring drawback the place the show would merely neglect to.. show sure video games. This began from launch with Horizon Zero Daybreak, and in Silent Hill 2, all the things labored high-quality till I attempted swapping the decision to 720p – for which I used to be punished with an unbudging black display screen and a few mocking menu music that confirmed the sport was in any other case nonetheless working. Hopefully this may be fastened on Zotac’s finish, as restarting and reinstalling graphics drivers didn’t assist a jot.
This has develop into a standard theme with Steam Deck alternate options: they’re often sooner, and are available packing a wider vary of {hardware} options, and but they not often find yourself feeling as sensible to make use of. That goes for battery life too, sadly. In contrast to each the unique and OLED Steam Decks, the Zone evidently doesn’t know to stretch its lifespan when working much less demanding video games: with the audio system and display screen brightness each on 50%, I bought 1h 44m out of Forza Horizon 5, 1h 49m out of Elden Ring, and 1h 47m out of Portal 2. Factors for consistency, however I’d a lot moderately take a Steam Deck OLED on an extended flight, as that managed 5h 48m in Portal 2, in addition to 2h 14m within the hungrier Elden Ring. The ROG Ally X can handily outlast the Zone too, scoring 2h 55m in Forza.
I don’t want to sound like I’m boiling a handheld’s complete attraction all the way down to solely its battery life, however these are supposed to be moveable machines, so we will’t actually understate the significance of endurance both. And the Zone isn’t even particularly good for wired use, because the bundled USB-C charging cable is so brief that the one means you may play it whereas topping up is that if your chair is correct subsequent to an influence outlet. Which makes HDR a good much less doubtless proposition, too.
You additionally don’t get a case, which for a bundle costing £850 a pop – £50 greater than the ROG Ally X, and almost £400 greater than a base Steam Deck OLED – is simply imply. The Zone’s chart-topping sport efficiency and premium inputs do imply it can beat any allegations of daylight theft, but in addition, uh, oof? £850 is crème de la crème cash, and on software program and battery life, the Zone is extra like a semi-skimmed Cravendale.
Its efficiency and controls, alternatively, actually are top-notch, and regardless of some HDR woes the AMOLED panel nonetheless makes an outstanding display screen for basic function play. So what to make of it?
In the end, that comes all the way down to the way you weigh either side of the framesrate-versus-practicality tradeoff. There are, I’m positive, individuals on the market who’ve been left chilly by the brawniness of moveable PCs to this point – so the Zone, being as able to outmuscling the Steam Deck and ROG Ally X as it’s, could possibly be the one they’ve been ready for. Even when the hand held that burns twice as shiny burns half as lengthy.
The Steam Deck OLED, in the meantime, is the extra balanced possibility. It’s not that quick, no, however it’s near half the worth of the Zone whereas being simpler to make use of, and for much longer durations. And whereas that’s most likely essentially the most tepid conclusion I’ve ever written for something, that is just like the fourth “pricier than a Steam Deck however sooner and fancier” handheld PC assessment I’ve achieved, and there are solely so many various methods of claiming that. Perhaps that’s the place the fatigue comes from?
